[p5.js 2.0 Bug Report]: textWidth ignores leading and trailing spaces

Most appropriate sub-area of p5.js?

• Accessibility
• Color
• Core/Environment/Rendering
• Data
• DOM
• Events
• Image
• IO
• Math
• Typography
• Utilities
• WebGL
• Build process
• Unit testing
• Internationalization
• Friendly errors
• Other (specify if possible)

p5.js version

2.0.4

Web browser and version

Firefox 142.0 (64bit)

Operating system

MacOSX

Steps to reproduce this

In 2.0.4 the textWidth() function does not measure leading and trailing white space and treats a string comprising entirely of spaces as an empty string.

I suspect that the string being measured is being 'trimmed' of leading and trailing white space prior to calculating the text width.

Steps:

Run the code snippet:

1. In 1.11.0 both p5js and js report the same text width
2. In 2.0.4 the Javascript function behaves the same as before but the p5js textWidth function measures the text ignoring the leading and trailing spaces.

Snippet:

function setup() {
  createCanvas(640, 400);
  let s = "    Quark    ";
  console.log(textWidth(s));
  console.log(drawingContext.measureText(s).width);
}

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[ksen0]

Hi @quark-z , thanks for raising this.

In 2.0.4, that functionality is covered by fontWidth(...), while textWidth(...) calculates the text's tight bounding box. So in that case, it's intentional.

cc @perminder-17 - any ideas on improving docs with respect to this, addition to the compatibility documentation PR I just made?

Thanks for the clarification.

[perminder-17]

I’d recommend adding interleaved examples to the textWidth() reference that demonstrate the current behavior, especially around trailing spaces. This will make it clear that, as things stand, leading and trailing spaces have no effect on the measured width. I’m happy to draft a PR for this. Alternatively, this feels like a great good-first-issue for new contributors

[perminder-17]

Hi @quark-z ,are you interested in editing your issue making it more specific for the documentation improvement?

[ksen0]

Thanks for the excellent summary & next steps for this issue @perminder-17 ! It would be great to include this in the 2.1. milestone, so for now let's open this to volunteers - and if no one works on this before the end of September, please feel free to take it on.

[Nitin2332]

Hi @ksen0, @perminder-17! I'd like to work on this issue. Can I take it up? Thanks!